A few comments on bare breasts (m/f) on #tfboulevard

Let's talk about breasts (m/f). Or, if that's a bit too confrontational: the tendency of young up-and-coming acting talents to get naked on stage. And then do something with juice. Of fruit mostly, or just water, or oil and glitter.

At Festival Boulevard yesterday, for the third time in a week, I had a view from row two of reasonably tight-fitting young-man flesh. First at the opening performance, where the thinness of the bodies in Garden of Delights was particularly striking, later in the rather empty-headed Flemish version of A Winter's Tale, and Thursday 11 August at Bacchantes, a bestselling take on Euripides' 2,500-year-old classic about ecstasy.

Vulnerability

Something struck me about this nudity. Once, bare breasts on stage were a sign of vulnerability rather than eroticism. The breasts on show this week, besides being shapely, were much more a sign of strength, of aggression even, and of distance. Not necessarily attractive, rather a bit repulsive, because they were also shown to the public with a certain vanity.

So it was a bit distracting, and not because of carnal lust, but because of emerging thoughts of new conceptions of nudity, music video culture and empowerment. Something like that. Is there a battle going on between the increasing ossification on social media on the one hand and the strong imagery of a Kanye West or a Beyoncé? Something to devote an essay to sometime, it seems to me.

On the train back from Den Bosch, the thought also occurred to me: what is actually new? In Hieronymus Bosch's 500-year-old painting Garden of Delights, naked bodies are also omnipresent. In all freedom. Hundreds of white little people indulging in much more than what I saw live before me during the performances at this festival.

Bizarre combination

So it changes, but it also comes full circle. For instance, it was refreshing to see a pair of young actors take on the phenomenal but also totally elusive classical play Bacchantes on Thursday. Euripides wrote it as a bizarre combination between farce, stand-up comedy, tragedy and horror film. More troublesome still: the play seems to condone the ecstatic murder of people who do not believe in the new Wine God from the East, just as Euripides takes sides with the mother who murders her children to avenge her husband's infidelity in his other well-known play, Medea.

World-famous, and already showered with gold medals at theatre Olympiads 2 500 years ago, are the so-called bode stories, in which shepherds report on horrors in the mountains. In Greek theatre, these were not depicted, but were a competition element in the tragedy festivals: who can give the most enervating description of such things, or of horse races, as happens in Elektra.

Farm stories

The power of words had already been explored quite a bit by the Greeks, and the funny thing is that the moving-image culture of our time has to go to great lengths to emulate it. The chariot race scene in Ben Hur, for instance, is based entirely on a messenger's description of a chariot race in Elektra[hints]Sophocles, Euripides's predecessor, used the description of a chariot race in which Orestes is said to have perished to make a wonderful story, where the blood literally splatters around your ears, right down to the bad guy's knife wheels[/hints]. Personally, I've always found that text more impressive than the 70mm cinemascope version, although it's also quite good. Just a bit more expensive to make.

So something similar happens with these Bacchants: the four actors open the performance with the depiction of the messenger story from the fourth act, and so that's where all these breasts come out of their clothes, in combination with lots of exploding fruit and cola. Heavily intended and very much in keeping with the image we have of wild and young theatre, but not very functional. It only becomes so when the language comes in and, in an added monologue, a wonderful link is made between the personal current affairs of the players (a very diverse company in terms of surnames, language and appearance), the arrival of new religions and the xenophobia this brings.

That in itself doesn't require those breasts on stage, but since the ancient Greeks didn't really leave them covered either, it's quite possible in this performance. Indeed: shouldn't we just make it a precept? From now on, everyone should enter the arena naked. Also something for Rio.